CHICAGO - Matt Leszczak's story is really not much different from millions of other Americans. Immigrants have been coming to this country's shores for generations to live the American dream. Leszczak was lucky to get in to logistics in Chicago. Starting in warehousing thru dispatching to freight brokering, Leszczak always saw trucking companies struggling with drivers. With 8.2% unemployment in 2012, companies surprisingly say they've had 3 million job openings every month, according to the Labor Department, but employers are having trouble filling these positions because they can't find skilled workers to do the jobs. 200,000 jobs are for truck drivers. The median annual wage for a trucker that works for a private fleet, such as a truck driver employed by Walmart, is $73,000, according to the ATA. The Labor Department pegs the median annual salary for all truck drivers at around $40,000. To become a heavy-hauling driver one needs a CDL driver license and proper training. Some of the bigger freight forwarders will cover training and all CDL costs for new employees. The trucking companies, warehouses, and private sector in the U.S., employ an estimated 8.9 million people in trucking-related jobs; nearly 3.5 million are truck drivers. The United States economy depends on trucks to deliver nearly 70 percent of all freight transported annually, accounting for $671 billion worth of manufactured and retail goods transported by truck in the U.S. alone. That's not including the $295 billion in truck trade with Canada and $195.6 billion in truck trade with Mexico. It's a job that cannot be shipped overseas and has the potential to drive the cost of goods higher and ultimately hurt the U.S. economy. Immigration reform might help to fulfill the increasing gap in the trucking industry, help lower the cost of truck load as well as LTL freight, and improve freight delivery time. There have been several legislative attempts to overhaul the U.S. immigration policy over the past decade, and all of them have failed. The American people rejected these efforts because they were primarily focused on addressing the demands of the people who broke our laws. In the U.S. labor force, there were 8.1 million unauthorized immigrants either working or looking for work in 2012 - all potential drivers already in the U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio says people who immigrated to the U.S. illegally but haven't committed any major crimes could be allowed to stay. "I don't think you're going to round up and deport 12 million people," he states. President Barack Obama said Monday he expects immigration to be a major issue in the 2016 election. If we have immigration reform, we will have more drivers, freight estimate will be lower, the U.S. trucking industry will boost up, and cost of goods in your market will drop significantly, says Leszczak.